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Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Edgar Wright's 'Baby Driver' Trailer Starts The Song Over

As excited as I am for Baby Driver—it is
an Edgar Wright movie after all, and he’s yet to do me dirty—I wasn’t super
into the first trailer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still drooling over the movie,
I just didn’t adore that first look like apparently everyone else in the world.
(I didn’t hate it; I simply didn’t love it.) What I do wholeheartedly dig,
however, is this new Baby Driver trailer.

There’s just something about this Baby Driver trailer, this use of Golden Earing’s “Radar
Love,” that lands a little harder for me. I feel like everyone was super high
on SXSW premiere vibes last time and things got blown out of proportion.

It’s nigh impossible to find anything written about
Baby Driver that doesn’t mention the rhythm of the editing.
Everything, at least according to people who’ve actually seen the movie, syncs
up to the soundtrack, the gunshots, the car chases, everything, and that comes
through. (The previous trailer felt overly manufactured to me, while this one
has a more natural flow where I can see how it works in the actual movie.)

All in all, Baby Driver looks a lot like a
gritty 1970s car chase movie filtered through Edgar Wright’s weird and wonderful
brain. And that sounds about as perfect as it gets.

Here’s a synopsis if that’s your jam:

A talented, young getaway driver (Ansel Elgort) relies on
the beat of his personal soundtrack to be the best in the game. When he meets
the girl of his dreams (Lily James), Baby sees a chance to ditch his criminal
life and make a clean getaway. But after being coerced into working for a crime
boss (Kevin Spacey), he must face the music when a doomed heist threatens his
life, love and freedom.

Not that it actually matters, but I’m incredibly curious to
see how Baby Driver performs at the box office. The studio
recently moved the release date up, from a relatively isolated August slot to
one right in the thick of summer blockbuster season.

That move shows confidence in what they have, but it’s also
a big step up in competition. There was little around it before, but now
Baby Driver falls smack in the middle of the new
Transformers movie and Spider-Man:Homecoming, among others.

There’s a ton of hype for Baby Driver—almost
everyone I know is foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog for this movie. But I
also live in an insular little movie-centric niche, and that doesn’t always
translate. I don’t know if the real world shares this enthusiasm. Movie folk
were all similarly tingly for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
before it’s release, only to watch it tank in spectacular fashion.
Baby Driver does have more star power and looks to have a
wider appeal—Scott Pilgrim is so, so nerdy—so hopefully that
helps.

And Edgar Wright is beloved and adored, but really only in
certain circles, he’s not a mainstream superstar. Sure, he’s responsible for a
handful of legitimate cult classics, but he’s never had a huge theatrical hit.
A few have done well, but he’s never had a movie make more than $31 million domestically (Scott Pilgrim), and Hot
Fuzz is his highest international earner, at a hair over $80 million.

Obviously, none of this means a damn thing. If the movie
hits, it hits. The studio certainly appears to have faith, and I would love nothing
more than to see this be the movie that makes Edgar Wright a household name and
gives him free reign to do whatever the hell he wants in the future. We’ll have
to wait and see.